


all misery

by driveshaft



Category: Lost
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Suicide mention, jack is my fave :((
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:41:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27652898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/driveshaft/pseuds/driveshaft
Summary: Kate can’t look at him anymore. He doesn’t blame her. (No, never her— only himself.)(or: everything jack shepherd couldn't fix.)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	all misery

**Author's Note:**

> i.... really, truly don't know what this is. if you read it and think "what the hell is this"... yeah, me too

_i._

He blames himself when Sarah leaves, but it can’t be all bad, right, because now he’s got something else to fix— 

Or, at least Sarah says so, like it’s some sort of a consolation, like it’s supposed to make him feel any better. She has tears in her eyes and it’s the last time Jack sees her before she storms away and never comes back. (Never calls. Moves on, finds someone new.)

And Jack almost never drinks because it reminds him too much of his father for his liking, of everything he had always tried so hard to avoid becoming, but he does that night— because maybe he and his father are one and the same, after all. 

Maybe they’re not so different, and he blames himself because he knows he’ll never be able to fix things, not this time.

And after his plane goes down, he meets Juliet on the Island, pretty Juliet with her long blonde hair and her kind eyes, and she tells him _yes_ , Sarah is happy. _She’s happy._

_Well_ , he thinks bitterly, _that makes one of us._

He still blames himself. 

  
  
  
  


_ii._

Jack goes down to Australia because his mom can’t do it herself. She tells him, teary-eyed and frantic, to _bring him home_. 

_Bring your father home, Jack._ (It’ll echo in his mind forever, over and over.) 

So he books a ticket, flies out. His father’s hotel room is empty when he arrives, all bright white floors and pristine walls to match. An untouched glass of scotch sits on the bedside table. 

Jack’s footsteps echo a little too loudly, and that’s a little strange because— Because, well... 

There is nothing quite like learning your father has been found dead in an alley ( _heart attack_ , they tell him, and Jack wonders just how much alcohol was involved), and Jack’s knuckles are a pale white, just like the floors back in that empty hotel room in Sydney, and he tells the officer sitting across from him he’s sorry, he just needs a minute (or two, or three, or—). 

He steps outside and stumbles over to the nearest trash can, and he coughs up nothing because the officer had told him he needed to come down and identify the corpse. 

His father’s corpse. 

  
  


_His father’s corpse._

  
  


_His father_ _—_

  
  


His father is lying on a steel examination table, half-zipped up in a body bag and _that’s him,_ _all right,_ Jack nods curtly, and then he has to leave again because he can’t stand the sight of his father lifeless on that table, and can he go now, please? 

He cries that night. Alone and in his hotel room, with its white floors that match the tops of his knuckles, he cries. 

He cries once, and when he’s finally done, he wipes his eyes and tells himself it’ll be the last time he does. (A lie has never felt so comforting before.) 

The next morning, he scribbles his father’s eulogy down on the back of a cocktail napkin while sitting in an airport bar, and. And. 

And he blames himself. 

He can’t read his writing— he never wanted to be a doctor, anyway. 

  
  
  
  
  


_iii._

Desmond doesn’t tell him exactly what happened that afternoon, but Jack thinks he’s got a pretty good idea. 

He hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye, but maybe it’s better this way because Jack has never really had the best track record with goodbyes. (He’d always held on too tight, afraid of what would happen if he let go.)

He sits out by the ocean sometimes, sits on the sand, listens to the waves crashing on the shore, and he thinks of Charlie. The sun hangs low in the sky, tilting and breaking through a sheet of grey clouds above. And had he known, he would’ve taken Charlie’s place in a heartbeat, would’ve gone down to the Looking Glass that day instead. 

Maybe it’s because of his tendency— or compulsion, whatever, he’s heard it all before— to always _need_ to fix things, but Charlie deserved it more than anyone Jack’s ever known.

He cries a little too hard, for a little too long, when the sun finally sets in oranges and reds over the sea. 

It is not comforting, not nice; it’s pain, and it’s heartbreak, and it’s yet another life taken too soon. 

He’ll never look at a sunset the same again. 

  
  
  
  
  


_iv._

He’s on a plane he hopes like hell will crash when he learns that Jeremy Bentham has died. 

There is an obituary printed in the paper that he’s reading (of course there is, he thinks— it’s one hell of a coincidence, or maybe he knows it’s something more, and maybe he ignores that thought), and he tears it out carefully because, _damn it_ , he owes John _that_ , at least. 

His hands shake the rest of the way home. He isn’t sure if they will ever stop. (Doesn’t remember when, exactly, they had started, either.) 

“Forgive me,” he whispers. He repeats it again, like a prayer, over and over and thinks only of John when he does. _Forgive me; forgive me; forgive me._

_Forgive me._ (He’s meant nothing more.) 

He wants to tell it to John himself. He owes him that, too. 

And his heart pounds in his chest, and he thinks he jumps; that he’s falling, has been for a while now, until he’s pulled right back to the edge by a scream and the terrible sound of glass shattering, metal _crunching_. He’ll never forget it for as long as he lives. 

Besides, there’s a scar on his forehead, up near his temple, that won’t let him even if he tried. 

He still keeps that obituary in his wallet. Folded in half so it’d fit, tucked behind his driver’s license. (He still holds on. Still remembers. Still can’t fix it.

Still has that goddamn scar on his forehead.) 

It’s a reminder, really. That’s what this is— all of this. A reminder that he almost killed himself that night, and if it wasn’t for that wrecked car in the middle of the 405 ( _his fault, his fault)_ , he would’ve been long gone.

He stumbles into his bedroom, drunk and alone, reads the obituary for the first time in— God, he isn’t even sure; it all feels like a blur now, and _here’s another thing he couldn’t fix, so what the hell’s the point?_

  
  
  


Kate can’t look at him anymore. He doesn’t blame her. (No, never her— only himself.) 

  
  
  
  
  


_v._

Jack dies on an island somewhere in the South Pacific. 

  
  


He bleeds out while he watches a plane fly over him. (He finally believes in fate now, he thinks.)

  
  


For once, he doesn’t want to fix a thing— he doesn’t have the need, the urge to.

  
  


There is no burning car, no glass of Scotch, no obituary, and he finally believes in fate. 

  
  


It feels nice. 

  
  



End file.
